Sunrise & Sunset in Toronto — Times for Any Date

Why Toronto's day runs from nine hours to fifteen

Toronto sits at 43.65° north and 79.38° west, on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. That latitude is roughly halfway up the northern temperate belt — far enough from the equator to get real seasons, not so far that winter swallows the day. The swing is wide but measured: 8 hours 55 minutes on 22 December against 15 hours 27 minutes on 20 June, a range of 392 minutes, a little over six and a half hours of daylight gained and lost every year.

Both ends of that range come from the tilt of Earth's axis, not from distance to the Sun. In late June the northern hemisphere leans 23.44° toward the Sun, so Toronto sits well inside the sunlit cap and the day runs long; in late December the same tilt points away and the cap shrinks, leaving the city dark for more than fifteen hours. Latitude alone fixes the swing: cities nearer the pole move harder, while a tropical city like Singapore holds within about ten minutes all year.

The month-by-month table

Sunrise and sunset for the first of each month in 2026. The two middle time columns are Eastern Standard Time (UTC−5) — exactly what the calculator above prints, because the engine holds the standard offset fixed all year. The final column repeats the pair on a Toronto clock, where daylight time adds an hour from mid-March to early November.

Read the table against the seasons. Daylight peaks at 15h 24m on 1 July and bottoms out at 8h 59m on 1 January — nearly six and a half hours apart, and because the table samples only the first of each month it never quite touches either extreme. The change is fastest around the equinoxes, close to two minutes a day, and almost stalls at the solstices, which is why a midwinter sunset seems to hold at the same minute for a fortnight.

Toronto sits west of its time meridian

Eastern Standard Time is defined at UTC−5, the 75° west meridian. Toronto's longitude is 79.38° west, so the city lies 4.38° west of its own meridian — about 17.5 minutes of solar time. Judged on longitude alone, solar noon would fall near 12:17, noticeably after the clock's 12:00.

Across a full year, solar noon actually runs from 12:01 to 12:32 standard time. The 17.5-minute longitude offset never moves; the rest of the swing comes from the equation of time — the gap between apparent and mean solar time created by Earth's elliptical orbit and its 23.44° axial tilt. In early November the Sun runs fast and noon arrives at 12:01; in mid-February it runs slow and noon is pushed to 12:32.

Standard time or daylight time? The one adjustment to make

Ontario keeps daylight saving from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. In 2026 clocks go forward on 8 March (2:00 am becomes 3:00 am, UTC−4) and back on 1 November (2:00 am becomes 1:00 am, UTC−5). The calculator does not follow that change: it prints standard time for every date you enter.

So for anything between 8 March and 1 November 2026, add one hour to both numbers to match a Toronto clock. Outside that window, take them as printed.

The changeover days are where readers get caught. On 7 March sunrise reads 06:42 standard, which is also 06:42 on the wall clock. The next morning it reads 06:40 standard but the clock has jumped to 07:40 — 58 minutes later than the day before. November reverses it: 31 October reads 07:51 local, and on 1 November the same sunrise is 06:53 local, 58 minutes earlier on the wall.

The formula behind every Toronto sunrise

The calculator follows the NOAA solar-position algorithm, the same one behind most published sunrise tables. For a given date it computes:

1. Fractional year γ = 2π/365 × (day-of-year − 1 + 0.5)
2. Equation of time, in minutes, from a four-term cosine expansion of γ
3. Solar declination δ, from a seven-term expansion of the same angle
4. Hour angle H = arccos[ cos z ÷ (cos φ · cos δ) − tan φ · tan δ ]
5. Sunrise and sunset = solar noon ∓ 4H minutes, with noon = 720 − 4λ − EoT + 60·tz

Here φ is the latitude, λ the longitude in degrees east (negative west of Greenwich), and tz the standard offset in hours. The zenith angle z is 90.833°, not 90°: that extra 0.833° is atmospheric refraction at the horizon plus the angular radius of the solar disc. Sunrise is the moment the upper limb appears, not when the centre crosses the horizon; drop it and every time here moves by four to five minutes.

Three worked examples

All three use the calculator's own standard-time output, so you can enter the same dates above and compare line by line.

21 June 2026 — the June solstice. Sunrise 04:36, sunset 20:02, solar noon 12:19. Daylight runs 15 hours 26 minutes — within a minute of the year's peak. Daylight saving is in force, so add an hour: 05:36 and 21:02 on a Toronto clock. The morning golden hour lasts 66 minutes, from 04:14 (Sun at −4°) up to 05:20 (Sun at +6°); the evening window matches it, and the blue hour is 14 minutes at each end.

21 December 2026 — the December solstice. Sunrise 07:48, sunset 16:43, solar noon 12:16. Daylight runs 8 hours 55 minutes, the shortest of the year. No daylight saving is in force, so the Toronto clock agrees with the printed values. The golden hour stretches to about 67 minutes at each end, because the Sun crosses the horizon at a shallow angle in midwinter; the blue hour is 13 minutes.

20 March 2026 — the March equinox. Sunrise 06:22, sunset 18:29, solar noon 12:26. Daylight runs 12 hours 07 minutes — a few minutes over half a day, because refraction and the disc's size lift the Sun into view before the geometric half-day point. Daylight saving has already started on 8 March, so the clock reads 07:22 and 19:29. The golden hour shortens to 55 minutes, because the Sun crosses the horizon more steeply at an equinox than at a solstice.

Golden hour and blue hour over Lake Ontario

The calculator defines the golden hour as the window in which the Sun stands between −4° and +6° above the horizon, and the blue hour as the deeper band from −6° to −4°. At Toronto's latitude the golden hour runs about 66 minutes at each end on the June solstice, about 67 minutes on the December solstice and 55 minutes at the equinoxes. The blue hour is shorter — 14 minutes at the June solstice, 13 in December, 11 at the equinoxes.

The geography cuts both ways. Downtown Toronto faces south across Lake Ontario, so in winter the Sun rises over the open lake to the south-east and sets over the water to the south-west — a clean, flat horizon of exactly the kind the algorithm assumes, which makes the Islands and the harbourfront reliable places to catch the first and last light. Summer reverses it: the Sun comes up north of due east over Scarborough and sets north of due west over Etobicoke, so on the longest evenings a westward view down the shoreline is not the sunset shot it looks like on a map.

Where the numbers can surprise you

• The calculator prints standard time. Between 8 March and 1 November 2026, add one hour to match a Toronto clock.
• The earliest sunrise is not on the longest day. Judged on the wall clock, the year's earliest sunrise falls on 15 June at 05:35 local, several days before the solstice.
• The latest sunset is not on the longest day either. It falls on 28 June at 21:03 local, after the solstice, because the equation of time keeps pushing sunset later into late June.
• The latest sunrise comes at the end of October. The latest sunrise of 2026 is 31 October at 07:51 local, the final morning of daylight time. The next morning the clock has gone back an hour and sunrise reads 06:53 — 58 minutes earlier on the wall.
• The earliest sunset is in early December. It falls on 10 December at 16:41 local, about ten days before the solstice, while the equation of time is still pulling sunset earlier.
• Solar noon is never at 12:00. It ranges from 12:01 to 12:32 standard time, moved by longitude and by the equation of time.
• A clear horizon matters more than elevation. Downtown towers cut the visible sunrise by twenty minutes or more, while a Lake Ontario horizon delivers almost exactly the calculated time.

Sources and standards

Coordinates are the standard city reference point, 43.65° N and 79.38° W. The algorithm and the 90.833° zenith follow the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory's solar calculator. Time-zone and daylight-saving dates follow Canada's official timekeeping rules as kept by the National Research Council, and the meridian basis (75° W for UTC−5) follows the same standard.

• NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory — Solar Calculator
• National Research Council Canada — official time and time-zone rules
• Environment and Climate Change Canada — climate and daylight records
• Natural Resources Canada — geodetic reference systems and coordinates

Tables and worked examples on this page were generated from the site's own solar engine and cross-checked against the live calculator on 24 October 2026. Every time is reproducible: enter the same date above and the same numbers appear.

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